Jeremy Clarkson can be a surprisingly magnanimous guy.
After all, since leaving Top Gear and the BBC behind, the motoring journalist turned farmer has consistently backed the show.
Earlier this year he suggested rebooting the series, saying that they should review electric cars.
‘It will work if they do it right,’ he explained. ‘There is an opening for someone to review electric cars because no one really understands them.
‘They should do it as a consumer programme, which would be quite a ballsy thing to do because no one wants to go back to the Seventies, like What Car? magazine on television,’ Clarkson told The Times.
And with the recent news that the BBC is working on another Top Gear reboot, the 66-year-old has decided to share some more words of wisdom.
‘I wish them well with the project and will even tell them about the secret sauce I used to make the show a ratings winner around the world,’ he wrote in his column for The Sun.
‘Every Monday morning, I’d arrive in the production office, sit down and think: “Right. What can I do this week to annoy the BBC?”’
Clarkson then goes on to promise that’s the key to attracting viewers: ‘making a show the BBC absolutely hates’.
The BBC annouced that Top Gear was returning at the Edinburgh TV Festival earlier this week.
The BBC’s director of entertainment Ed Havard told attendees at the festival: ‘There has been a lot of speculation about this and we can confirm that Top Gear is coming back.’
Havard refused, however, to address recent speculation that comedian Jimmy Carr and Traitors star Joe Marler were being lined up to present the show.
‘Jimmy would be a great host, but I won’t be discussing that today,’ he said. ‘We will have more information on Top Gear shortly.’
Top Gear was a BBC staple up until 2022, when then host Freddie Flintoff was involved in a serious accident.
The former cricketer suffered serious facial and rib injuries that were described by his legal team as ‘life-changing’.
